Thursday, July 14, 2016

OK, it's a cheap shot, but I couldn't resist. With #coiffeurgate à défrayer la chronique, who needs Bastille Day? But the president, in the traditional 14 juillet interview, availed himself of the opportunity to lay down the law to his wayward Minister of the Economy, the ubiquitous M. Macron, whose Bastille Day Eve rally saw him bellowing "On to victory in 2017" without actually declaring his candidacy or specifying whose victory he had in mind--a fair sample of the political ambidexterity that has become Macron's trademark. Ni droite ni gauche, ni candidat ni ministre, ni loyal ni déloyal ... To which Hollande's response was less crisp than Chirac's famous rebuke to the young Turk Sarkozy when he was similarly straining in his traces: "Je décide, il exécute." Hollande instead meekly suggested that there might be limits to his patience without actually naming the person who is trying it.

All this is very amusing, but in the meantime the European left seems to be in utter disarray everywhere. Labour is on the verge of collapse, Renzi is facing a banking crisis in Italy, the Spanish left failed to meet expectations (h/t Sofia Perez), the German left is comatose, Tsipras has lost his luster in Greece ... I can't remember a more dismal scene.

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".